Vienna, 2016. The courtyard we were given had already been designed three times: stone, planting, water. What it was missing was a fourth drawing, one made of light. We were asked to build that drawing for a single season, across two terraces and a long stair running down to the garden, without fixing anything into the fabric of the old building.

Light as a building material

So we used our lamps the way a builder uses members and columns. The Sylph forms from our Sypha Outdoor collection stood along the stair at regular intervals — slender brass stems, opaline glass, quiet verticals that hold a line in the dark the way a balustrade holds it by day. On the upper terrace the Nomad pieces from More Outdoor took the horizontal work: hand-shaped glass spheres set low over the stone, small glass table lights left where people would sit, one pendant above the table that stayed in use long after the city went quiet.

Hand-shaped glass behaves differently once it is outside. Indoors it reflects a room; here it had nothing to reflect but each other, so the spheres read as a low constellation spread across the paving. Nothing on site was lit evenly. The arcade stayed dark, the stair stayed bright, and the planting between the two was only suggested. That contrast is what makes a space legible at night — the same means an architect uses with a wall.

The installation ran from early summer into autumn, and the light changed with the season rather than against it. Visitors came for the courtyard and stayed for the shape the dark made around it. Architecture is only a way of organising space. We organise it with light.